And Miles to Go Before I Sleep
by RoboticRainboots
Summary: Caught up in the darkness of an evening under the stars of Resembool, Edward and Alphonse share a conversation on the roof months after the Promised Day that gives Ed new perspective on all that Al has suffered through.


Edward wakes slowly, like each part of his body is waking up individually at their own paces. First, it's the tingle in his right foot toes, the pinpricks of lights behind his closed eyelids, the tickle in his chest. Waking is a process, a slow and gradual thing.

His waking is usually a fast thing, shortness of breath and no memory of sitting up, falling out of the bed in a tangled mess of sweat and bedsheets. Sleep is a restless thing for Ed, always a feeling of discontent.

Not tonight, though. Now he wakes of his own accord, slow and stretching, without nightmare or fear. It's kind of nice.

It's still dark outside as Ed wakes. The curtains on the window above Alphonse's bed are drawn completely back, the whole sky visible outside. Like flakes of snow, the glittering stars spread out across the entire inky sky, marking their trails across its entire surface, leaving no inch of space behind unlit. They're pearls pressed against a midnight velvet.

For a moment Ed watches them before looking at the clock sitting on the bedside table, trying to make out the directions of its hands in the dark. Five thirty-ish, something like that. Ed doesn't care to be accurate now, not when his mind is only half awake.

He considers for a moment turning back over and catching a couple more hours of sleep, but it's early enough now that it probably won't last long. The sun will rise soon and Ed's enjoying his early morning peace, so maybe he should just turn and watch it come up through the big window.

There's a small feeling in the deep part of Ed's stomach, one that grows with each passing second. It's a small feeling, just a little tingling, but it's there nonetheless. It's like something is amiss. It's the same feeling he will sometimes get when he is worried about Alphonse, the one that Winry's dubbed his 'Big Brother Instinct'.

Ed sits up in his bed, a yawn escaping through his lips. Turning to Al's bed beside his, Ed sees that it's empty. The sheets are twisted, turned, draping off the side of the bed like they were hastily pushed away in the middle of the night.

Ed lets out a sigh. This isn't an uncommon sight, Al has nightmares fairly regularly and often gets out of bed in the middle of the night because of them. It always puts Ed on edge to find his bed empty when he wakes though, like everything since the Promised Day was all some kind of long and elaborate dream that he has finally woken up from. He's sure one day he'll wake to find Al's bed empty, the silver suit of armor resting in the corner watching over him like it always did. It isn't usually until he finds Al—often curled up asleep on the couch or on the foot of Winry's bed like a cat—and brings him back to bed that Ed can put his mind to rest.

He wonders now how Al feels when their places are reversed, which more often the case. While Al can get up and sneak away sometimes after a nightmare, it isn't all too often. His nightmares are usually loud, noisy things that wake Ed up to the sound of screams. They're still new to him, the nightmares, and Al hasn't quite yet learned how to master the art of suffering through them as Ed has.

Ed's learned to be good at being in control of them. He's suffered through them for so long, since the Transmutation first took place so many years ago, that he's learned how to take care of them discreetly. He knows how to wake from the ravaging of his mind, gruesome visions so twisted that he wants to throw up, quietly and lay back down and pretend to be asleep for long enough until he actually is.

Leaving his warm bed behind, Ed gets up and searches the house for his little brother. He checks the living room and the kitchen, Winry's room where Al sometimes likes to go at night since Winry claims she works best when the sun isn't out, and often is awake during the night to keep him company. Ed even checks the workshop, but still, he doesn't find his little brother.

Ed starts to worry more and more as he slowly searches every inch of the house, but his brother is still nowhere in sight. He doesn't check Granny's room, he doesn't have guts to because he knows he'll be dead if he wakes her, but he highly doubts Al went in there either for the same reasoning.

It isn't until Ed looks for him out on the balcony that he gets a clue to where Al might be.

The air outside is warm and humid, but not warm enough to make Ed regret wearing his long pajama bottoms out here. It's mid-May now, and Ed can only imagine how hot it will be by the time June rolls around. Resembool's always so hot it's almost unbearable in the summer months.

On the balcony, one of the wooden porch chairs has been transmuted into a ladder that leads up to the roof of the house.

Ed takes the ladder. As his eyes peek over the roof line he sees Al lying there in the middle of the roof on his back, his face turned up to the sky, hands behind his head. His short, blond hair is messy, tousled either by the wind or his restless sleep, Ed isn't sure. Ed walks over to his brother, careful not to lose his balance up here, and lays down beside him.

They're quiet for a moment, and Ed mirrors his position, hands behind his head and eyes to the sky, searching for the thing that has Al's attention so deeply rooted upon it.

They're so quiet like that that Ed can't stand it. He's glad he found Al, but now he's worried something might be more wrong that he initially thought.

There's something different about Al tonight. An air of sadness, something more serious in the tension of his body. Whatever brought him up here, whatever idea his mind is constantly throwing around right now is clearly getting to him.

"Hey," Al finally says, like he's just realized Ed is up here beside him. He doesn't take his eyes away from the sky to look at Ed, only acknowledges his presence in his voice alone.

"Hey," Ed says back.

The sky is an inky mirror, clear like the crystal surface of a koi pond. There are no clouds in sight, every star in the early morning sky as bright as it can possibly be. There's something mesmerizing about it, even to Ed, who doesn't care all too much for stargazing. Sometimes, though, he'll think about the stars and their massive magnitudes and the absolute precision of the universe which is allowing for him to live on this earth and look out upon them at all. Every star, each and every one of them, had to align so directly for any of this to be possible at all.

He almost shares this idea with Al, but as soon as he opens his mouth to do so, Al speaks up instead.

"Do you see that one?" he points out to the north, "that bright one over there?"

"Which one?"

"The biggest one over the oak tree."

Ed squints, but he thinks that perhaps he can see the one Al is talking about. There are actually two bright ones right in that same area, beside each other like twins of the night. "I see it."

"That one makes up the constellation of Gemini. The story goes there were once two brothers, fathered by a mortal woman and a god. The brothers were inseparable, but only one was immortal while the other wasn't. One day, the mortal brother, Castor, was killed in a gruesome battle and his older brother, Pollux, the immortal twin, was so devastated over the loss of his brother that he begged the gods to let him die so he would not have to live on alone. The gods agreed to give him mercy and their bodies were placed in the sky as stars, forever to be remembered by all who knew them."

For a moment, Ed considers the story. He knows it isn't true, that gods and corpses made of stardust are only things of fiction, and he knows that Al knows this just as well as he does, but there's still something sad and truthful about the story that lingers with Ed. He wonders what he would do if it were he who was immortal, if he has lost Alphonse and was forced to forever wander alone. He wonders if he too would beg for the mercy of death, ask to be buried in the light of the stars.

He knows that it would be unbearable to go on even a moment without his little brother. He would be too overcome with great loss, unable to do anything without the other half of his very being. He wouldn't be able to handle it, just as Pollux wasn't able to handle the death of Castor. Like Pollux, Ed is certain he too would beg for the same mercy, the one of starlight and peace, despite knowing that Alphonse would do anything to see him live on.

When you miss something—someone—that much, there aren't many choices left to you.

They settle back into their quiet, the one that keeps Ed's shoulders tense and allows the anxiety to continue to brew within him.

When the silence is unbearable, Ed turns to Al. "Do you want to talk about it?" his voice laced with concern.

Al turns to him, one eyebrow raised ever so slightly. "What? The stars?"

"No, I meant do you want to talk about what brought you up here at this late—or early—hour."

Ed didn't really want to have to spell it all out for Al like that so bluntly, but Al's aversion to the question didn't allow him much room to be indirect.

Lucky for him, Al just laughs. "Oh," he says as if this came as a surprise to him, but there's still a silent nervousness to the way he moves. "I just came up here because I wanted to look at the stars."

It's an answer that sounds genuine, like Al truly is speaking the honest truth, and Ed really believes he _is, _but he also has a feeling that while Al is sharing the truth with him, he also isn't sharing the full truth either. Al is an excellent liar when he wants to be, so much better than Ed will ever be, but he cannot lie to Ed. Ed knows his little brother far too well to ever be lied to by him, he would spot it immediately and Al knows that. So instead, to make up for that inability to lie to Ed, Al has learned to tell only partial truths instead in order to not give himself away completely. He'll tell Ed enough of the truth to get by, but never the full thing if he can help it.

Again this time they grow quiet, but Ed isn't as worried as before. Now that he's brought it up, Al will come around, Ed knows he will. Al will speak when he's ready to, he's courageous and brave and he doesn't need Ed to hold his hand and force him to give away his secrets when he can do it on his own terms when he's finally ready.

And then Al turns to him, just as the first rays of the sun peak up above the crest of one of the hills, burning bright in the sky, framing Al's face in a halo of light as he props himself up on one elbow.

"Do you think you can miss a place that you hate?"

The question catches Ed off guard. Not because he wasn't expecting Al to speak, he was, but it's the nature of the question that gets him. He tries to look up at his little brother, to read the expression on his face and try and gain a clue from that, but the light around him is so bright Ed has to turn away.

What Ed does have to go by, instead of Al's facial expression, is the strain in his voice. There's such an eager desperation there, like this is a question that's be cycling around Al's mind of a very long time. Clearly it is not a new thought, but probably something he has lingered on for a long, long time and never had the courage to bring up before.

Whatever this is, whatever he is getting at here, it is obviously extremely important to him.

Al sometimes has a problem with being a bit vague. It's nothing new, a habit he's always had, but that doesn't mean it annoys Ed any less from time to time. It's an intentional thing too, Ed knows that sometimes Al speaks in that way on purpose to start a conversation he wants to have, but not to ask to have outright. Al's a good talker, he can manipulate a conversation in a million different ways until he's gotten someone to asks the exact questions he wants them to ask, to give away the precise secrets he is yearning to uncover. He can wind on a conversation for hours if that's what it takes him to reach the main thesis of what he really wants to talk about.

_To miss a place that he hates, _a million things could be meant by that, but Ed already has a feeling he knows what Al is getting at. Still, Ed has to know outright.

"What do you mean?"

Al doesn't look at him, his golden eyes still focused on the stars. "I think you can," he says, his voice quiet. "I think you can miss a feeling that once hurt you after it is gone."

"What's this about, Al?"

"I miss the stars," Al pauses, drawing in a breath and laying back down, putting his hands up in front of him, palms turned toward the heavens. "I miss how they look in the sky when there's no light at all. I miss their quiet, their glimmer. I never see them like this anymore. It's stupid, I know, but for so long they were like my only friends."

A knot ties in Ed's stomach. "It's not stupid," he manages to get out, but only barely. He is certain he knows where Al is going with this now. He knows Al's going to drag up what Ed thought he had finally begun to bury. It seems like he was wrong about that.

It hurts Ed to hear Al hint at it, his time in the armor and all the unbearably lonely nights he suffered with only the stars for company. He doesn't want to hear it, but he has no right to tell Al not to talk about it either. In all the time Al's been back in his body and they've finally come home, Al has almost never mentioned his time in the armor. He'll express joy at all the new things he can now do, but he does it in such a way where he doesn't ever bring up the metal coffin he left behind.

Ed thought that was a good thing, that it meant Al was starting to move on from all that had happened to him and the armor that was more a prison than a second chance at life. But now, so many months after Al has gotten his original body back, Ed is starting to realize that that experience of living in the armor might have hurt Al more than he'll ever be able to understand. More than Al can ever move on from unscarred, and that it's because of hurt and not healing that he won't bring it up.

Guilt tightens around Ed's through like a noose. He knows Al doesn't blame him for putting him in that armor, he's told him that countless times, but regardless, whether Al blames him or not, he was still the one who did it in the first place and so he's the one at fault.

Ed looks over at his brother, such sadness in his eyes, but Al won't look at him, won't meet his gaze.

The stars. He watches the stars.

Al continues. "At night, after you had fallen asleep, I would look out the window and study the stars. Sometimes I would even leave the barracks if I thought you were going to be okay for the night and sit on the steps only so that I could be closer to them. I learned each star's name, the constellations they made up, the stories they told," he stops, features scrunching together as if searching for how he wants to word the next part of what he's going to say.

"But I also hated them. Part of me always cursed the sight of them because of the solitude and loneliness they brought. Watching the stars meant I was alone, and I didn't want to be alone, but what choice did I have? I was tired but I couldn't sleep."

As he speaks, the morning sun pulls above the hill even higher, painting the sky in streaks of rosy pinks and oranges.

"I—"Al, hesitates, finally meeting Ed's eyes with such guilt and sorrow that Ed feels like he has to look away, but he won't. He can't do that to Al now. He won't abandon him like that.

"I hated being in that body so so much, but now that I'm gone from it, it's like a tiny piece of my soul is still constantly searching for it. The quiet, the solitude, the stars. Even the ragged pain of isolation, there's a piece of me that ever so slightly misses it. I hated it, but I miss it."

_Oh Al._

Ed knows Al doesn't mean to hurt him, that there is no malicious intent here, but every word he says is like another punch to Ed's gut. He knows Al has a right, more so than anyone Ed's ever known, to complain or to speak to the hurt he's gone through, but it almost hurts Ed too much to bear.

If it hurts Ed this much to hear, then there's no telling how much it hurt Al to actually live through.

Ed's never wanted to reach out and take all his little brother's pain off his shoulders and carry it himself more than he does now. He wants to be able to take that pain and cast it out to the stars, let it create its own sorrowful constellation. He can't stand to sit here and listen to Al's suffering without being able to do anything about it.

"Al—Al, I'm sorry," Ed whispers, his voice breaking somewhere in the middle.

"No, no, none of that. Don't be sorry Ed, you have nothing to be sorry about. I'm the one who should be sorry. I shouldn't have put that all on you at once, that was wrong of me to do."

"No, it wasn't. Al, you have every right to talk about what you went through; you shouldn't keep that all bottled up just for my sake."

"Sorry," Al whispers again.

Still laying on the roof, Ed takes Al's left hand in his right, giving it a light squeeze.

Ed thinks that maybe he gets it, if only partially. Perhaps the feeling of it, of missing a things you spent so many years hating, is like how he feels about his alchemy, which only ever seemed to bring pain and suffering into their lives, but something he still misses despite the fact that he would give it up a million times over in every version of reality if it gave Al his body back. Even then though, he didn't hate alchemy like Al hated the armor; in fact, he loved it. He loved the power of it all around him, the electric shock of energy in his bloodstream every time he transmuted. That is more the regular kind of missing, missing something you loved while not it is gone. Al's feelings are quite different than missing in the typical sense.

In the end, Ed doesn't think he'll ever fully be able to comprehend what Al went through—what he is still going through—because it is a feeling that is unreplicatable.

In the end, this is a burden Al will have to bear alone. Like the way he watched the stars, the way he sat alone by Ed's bedside and waited for the morning sun to rise, this too is something he must overcome in solitude. There is so one else who can feel this the way I did, hold all the pain of a suffering only he can understand. This is a walk he must do by himself.

There isn't anything he can do about it, Ed thinks, it is something that they will only have to leave to the weeks and months and years of time to heal. Time doesn't heal all wounds, not like people say it does, but it can help fade the scar that has been left crisscrossed across his little brother's heart.

Ed doesn't think Al is any less grateful for the body that he has despite what he said. Ed knows his little brother, and he knows how happy he is to be back. There is no question about that in Ed's mind, he's seen the way Al's face breaks into a smile at the sensation of the wind ruffling his hair, at the taste of pancakes early in the morning.

The feeling of loss and missing something, it does not lessen that joy or demean his happiness. It is just a lingering that he will forever have to live on holding on to until it begins to fade with the memory of the armor's lack of sensation.

They sit there in quiet reverie as the birds begin to sing their waking song and the sun makes its complete appearance above the crest of the hill. The light of it, its many yellow beams, turn everything they touch to gold. They wash away the stars in the early morning sky like they were never there at all, only the memory of them in their minds to ever hint at the fact that they ever existed there just minutes before.

"It's been a year," Al says, sitting.

"A year since what?" Ed tries to think but realizes he has absolutely no clue what the date actually is and hasn't known for a while. Sometimes, when life is good and better things come about, the calendar loses its importance and the days just pass as they please, uncounted and unknown.

Al groans. "Don't tell me you've already forgotten."

"Fine, if you're so smart, then _you _tell me what happened a year ago on this day."

"It's been a year since the Promised Day." _And a year since I got my body back_ goes left unsaid.

_Oh._

Ed had wondered why Al had decided to spill all of this out of him today. He thought it was random, that today was just another day, but now he knows better. A lot has happened in the past year.

It's funny, the way time flies, the way it crawls. The rate which the world spins on never changes, but the way we perceive it to never stays the same. A year of healing, a year of living a life full of joy and normalcy (or just about as much as it as they can get) has already passed them by, but there are so many more to come. They have an infinity of time ahead of them, so they don't have to rush.

So while time may be linear, move on in a forever constant, healing is not so neat. It happens in unique patterns, two people never the same. Sometimes it takes longer, and that's okay. They can't expect everything to be okay now that they're home, for everything to heal like it never happened at all now that they've completed their quest.

Ed knows he has wounds and scars of his own, so many that he has yet to let go and grow on from, and so it only makes sense that Al does too. They may not be the same pains, the same kind of hurt—for that would assume their experiences were the same (which they were not)—but that is okay to. Sometimes standing near each other, listening to each other and trying to understand the best they can, is enough. They can't expect anything else.

Besides, they have forever to get better, to learn to be okay with the past and put it all behind them. They can learn to be okay, no matter how long it may take.


End file.
